Suddenly, Love

5

WINTER IS MAKING ITS PRESENCE FELT. THE BOOK ERNST wants to write keeps getting more complicated. He mercilessly uproots words, expressions, and descriptions, but still the pages aren’t free of weeds. Every night there is a new disappointment. Ernst knows that no one will read his book; if he sends the manuscript to a publisher, they will return it. But he continues working and takes care with every word and expression. The years have not softened his self-criticism. Sometimes a faulty word will keep him awake all night. The old, tame words are his enemies, and he desperately battles against them.

After a night of struggle Ernst’s depression intensifies, and his words almost cease.

“What should I make, a cheesecake or an apple pie?” Irena asks, trying to change his mood.

“It doesn’t matter.”

When Ernst says, “It doesn’t matter,” that’s a sign that his appetite has diminished and depression is overwhelming him. This makes Irena spring into action. She doesn’t rest for a moment. She cooks; she tries new recipes. Maybe he’ll find one of her dishes tasty.

One day he said to her, “Last night I dreamed about my hometown.”

“Were you happy?”

“It was my city, but everything in it was arranged differently. The houses on Herrengasse had moved over to Siebenbirgerstrasse. The public garden was shifted over to the city hall plaza. I said to myself, everything can be put back in place, but I immediately understood that what had been uprooted couldn’t be restored.”

Irena had often heard Ernst speak about his hometown, but never with longing or with nostalgia. Her parents used to talk about Zalachov with hidden love, but every time Czernowitz was mentioned, Ernst’s face filled with sorrow, as though it was a secret that refused to be erased.

For years Ernst had tried to write, but every time he sat at his desk, some obstacle would get between him and the letters. They estranged themselves from him, but he didn’t give up. Even in his darkest moments he would write sentences and half sentences on slips of paper. He collected the slips of paper in a bag. Every now and then he would pick up the bag and take out a slip of paper. The notes were snippets of self-mockery, reproaches for weakness, notions about blindness, and false beliefs. But not a single word about his parents or about the grandparents who had enveloped his childhood and youth.

Ernst would wait for the new words to come to him at night, and as though in spite, they wouldn’t. If they did appear and he was ready for them, his job in the investment company used up his hours. His wife wickedly declared: A person shouldn’t write for the drawer. If you don’t publish, you’d be better off stopping.

The phone rings. Sylvia is calling. Irena approaches Ernst and whispers in his ear.

“I don’t want to talk to her,” he grumbles.

“Ernst can’t come to the phone.” Irena tries to be tactful.

“Did you tell him who was calling?”

“I did.”

“Tell him that he’s bad.”

Of course she doesn’t tell him that.

“I don’t want to see her,” Ernst says. “If she comes here, don’t let her in.”

Irena is pleased with Ernst’s vigorous response. For a moment she thinks that the evil spirits that have assailed him for the past few days have receded. Indeed, they have, but not his backache. Irena keeps rubbing salve on his back. The salve relieves the pain, and he gets out of bed and sits at his desk.

Since the beginning of winter, Irena’s own life has meant nothing: all her thoughts have been devoted to Ernst. Even when she is at home, surrounded by the objects she has lived with since her childhood, she thinks about him. Sometimes she telephones Ernst from home to ask whether the supper was tasty and whether she should bring him anything besides some rolls in the morning. If he asked her, she would have stayed in his house at night, too. Irena knows there are times when Ernst has to be by himself, to write and struggle. Though the struggle weakens him and usually depresses him, in the end it gives him the will to live. One morning he said to her, “Last night I wrote a chapter that I’m pleased with.” His face was drained, but there was a flash of victory in his eye.

Ernst is tall and robust, and his struggle to write is also robust. Irena envisions this struggle as the bending of iron bars. But when he is calm, sitting in the armchair and looking through a magazine, she wants to kneel at his feet, cover his hand with both of hers, and say, I’m so pleased that you allow me to serve you.

Once he commented to her: “You’re not a servant.”

“You don’t let me serve you,” she said with distress.

“We are friends, and friends don’t serve each other,” he replied.

Irena thought so much about those words that she began to think he was mocking her.